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Who really said it

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in

Written by Rosa Parks 1913–2005 · American civil rights activist
Verified In copyright

From Rosa Parks: My Story, the 1992 autobiography she wrote with Jim Haskins, at page 116. Two independent sources cite that exact page for this passage — Wikiquote’s sourced Rosa Parks section ↗ and Wikipedia ↗, which footnotes it to Parks & Haskins 1992, p. 116. The attribution is not in doubt. What has happened to the wording is: between the two halves of the version in circulation, the book carries a sentence most reposts leave out — “I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two.”

Last verified 21 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in” Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins, Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), p. 116. Popularly quoted with the two sentences about her age removed. · Verbatim: “People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Rosa Parks’s estate and Jim Haskins’s estate / Dial Books (Penguin Random House)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Rosa Parks — American civil rights activist. Theme: "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Written by
Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins
Work
Rosa Parks: My Story
Published
Dial Books, 1992 — quoted at p. 116
Status
Genuine; the circulating wording is condensed

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), p. 116

Set that against the version in circulation and the cut is obvious: the two sentences about her age disappear — which is a shame, because they are half the point she was making. One caveat on the transcription itself: Wikipedia renders the opening “People always say” and Wikiquote renders it “People always said”, both citing the same page. We have not read p. 116 ourselves, so we do not adjudicate between them.

Wikiquote: Rosa Parks — sourced section, citing Rosa Parks: My Story, p. 116

How we verified this

  • We read the raw wikitext of Wikiquote’s Rosa Parks page ↗ rather than a rendered summary, and its sourced section gives the full passage with the citation “Rosa Parks: My Story, p. 116, Rosa Parks and James Haskins (1992)”.
  • We also fetched the wikitext of Wikipedia’s Rosa Parks article ↗, which quotes the same passage and footnotes it to the identical source and page (Parks & Haskins 1992, p. 116) — an independent witness to the citation.
  • The book itself is held at the Internet Archive ↗, but only as a lending copy whose text we could not open. The page number therefore rests on two independent citations rather than on our own reading of p. 116 — and those two transcriptions differ on a single word, “say” against “said”, which is why this page does not treat that difference as a documented drift.
  • Parks made the same argument in her own handwriting years earlier: a draft in the Rosa Parks Papers ↗ puts it as “I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn’t take it anymore.”
In copyright

Rosa Parks: My Story was first published in 1992, well after the 1931 cut-off for U.S. public domain, and both authors’ estates and the publisher hold rights in it. Quoting a sentence for comment and criticism is one thing; the text is not free to reuse.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Right author, trimmed wording

Nothing about the attribution is wrong. What has happened to this passage is quieter: it has been trimmed in transit, and the trim removes the sentence that answers the myth most directly.

The missing sentences about her age Condensed, not fabricated

Between “…end of a working day” and “No, the only tired I was”, the sourced text carries “I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two.” — in Wikiquote’s transcription ↗ and in Wikipedia’s ↗ alike. She was rebutting two myths at once; the popular cut keeps only one.

“She was just tired after a long day’s work” The myth this passage exists to refute

The tired-seamstress version is the reason Parks wrote the paragraph. She was a long-serving NAACP branch secretary, and she spent decades correcting the idea that 1 December 1955 was fatigue rather than refusal.

Genuine Rosa Parks, from Rosa Parks: My Story (1992) at p. 116 — quoted almost everywhere in a shortened form that drops her age, per Wikiquote ↗ and Wikipedia ↗, which cite the same page.

Context

Why it mattered

This is the rare case of someone outliving their own legend long enough to argue with it in print. By 1992 the tired-seamstress story was fixed in schoolbooks, and Parks used her autobiography to take it apart sentence by sentence.

The correction matters because the two versions describe different events. Fatigue is something that happens to you. Being tired of giving in is a decision.

Fatigue is something that happens to you. Being tired of giving in is a decision.

Read the full story

Parks had been secretary of the Montgomery NAACP branch since 1943, investigating and documenting cases of racial violence, and had attended the Highlander Folk School in the summer of 1955. She knew what an arrest would set in motion.

She was not the first to refuse: Claudette Colvin, fifteen, had been arrested in Montgomery that March for the same thing. What followed Parks’s arrest was a 381-day boycott of the city’s buses.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Courage Justice Freedom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Rosa Parksen.wikiquote.org

The sourced section that documents this passage to Rosa Parks: My Story, p. 116 — with the two sentences the popular version drops.
Rosa Parks: My Storyarchive.org

The 1992 autobiography itself, at the Internet Archive (lending copy).
Drafts of early writings: accounts of her arrestloc.gov

Parks making the same argument in her own hand, around 1956–58, in the Library of Congress papers.
Rosa Parks Papersloc.gov

The digitised primary archive of her writings and correspondence.
Rosa Parksen.wikipedia.org

Biography and the arrest chronology — and an independent footnote citing this passage to Parks & Haskins 1992, p. 116.

The author

About Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

1913–2005 · American civil rights activist

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (1913–2005) was an American civil rights activist who served for more than a decade as secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP before her arrest on 1 December 1955 set off the Montgomery bus boycott. She published two memoirs, Rosa Parks: My Story (1992) and Quiet Strength (1994), and spent much of her later life correcting the sanded-down version of her own story.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Parks, Rosa, with Jim Haskins. Rosa Parks: My Story. New York: Dial Books, 1992, 116. Page cited independently by Wikiquote and by Wikipedia; the popular wording is a condensation of the text printed there.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in’?” Last verified 21 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/people-always-say-that-i-didnt-give-up-my-seat-because-i/

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